About Jason Thibeault

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

Study shows making medical marijuana legal has no effect on kids

Interesting bit of news from a study on medical cannabis’ legalization. The prohibitionists have long suggested that legalizing medical marijuana would just lead to more kids smoking up after school. Turns out that’s a claim that’s easily studied! Which, as you must know by now, you should avoid doing at all costs when you’re advocating something so anti-reality as prohibition of a substance less harmful than alcohol — because you’ll just get caught making claims that don’t bear any level of scrutiny. There’s even two states that are fairly close culturally to serve as subjects.

Rhode Island legalized medical marijuana in 2006, but Massachusetts did not. “We wanted to pair these two states because they have so much in common culturally and geographically,” says Dr. Esther Choo, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital.

Choo’s analysis used data collected from 1997 to 2009 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey. The analysis involved nearly 13,000 youth in Rhode Island and about 25,000 in Massachusetts. In each state in any given year, the study found, about 30% of youth reported using marijuana at least once in the previous month.

In other words, while marijuana use was common, there was no significant difference in rates of pot use between the years before and after legalization in Rhode Island. “We found no effect of the policy change,” says Choo.

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About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

The commenting rules are simple: don't piss me off. This rule has worked for me for a decade; I have never found a need for any other rule, because any other rules leads to rules-lawyering. Just remember -- this is my property, not yours.

And it’s also worth noting that a good number of “stoners” are, in fact, self-medicating because the standard medication options either don’t work, or cause a whole host of other problems.

For me, it helps with pain, spasticity, and anxiety. Bonus: I actually EAT, and don’t have to listen to my parents and friends going, “Have you eaten yet” or “EAT SOMETHING, ALREADY” all the damn time.

And the government says it has “no medicinal value”… *rolleyes*

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